Interesting thread, and great post there, futs! Get your chomps into Chomsky, eh?

Like you, I don't remember BNW all that well wheras 1984 is almost as clear as day in my memory.

With regard to Roach's comment about DH Lawrence and Savagery, The 50 years preceeeding the 1930s saw rapid growth in machinery and its various applications in society. However, Freud's 'discovery' of the unconcious, influenced the bulk of intellectual and arttistic life, which was geared towards exploring more animal instincts, and regarding those instincts as natural, in contrast to the rise of the machine in everyday life. I might give BNW another shot!_________________As I was saying, we all have to learn to live with disappointment

1984 for me, though I always thought Orwell should have been honest and called it '1944'.

I know he is a writer who divides opinion but, for me, Ben Elton's recent book 'Blind Faith' beats both 1984 and BNW as a genuinely unsettling vision of a dystopia that could be just around the corner._________________This calls for a subtle blend of psychology and extreme violence

I'm reading 1984 - for the first time since I read it at school, which was pre-1984. I'd recommend it. The ideological perspectives are very intriguing, and elements of the plot that speak loudly to me now, I missed somewhat as a teenager.

As to Blakes 7, the Federation has 1984 written all over it. The idea that if you prevent people from thinking too hard then they can't rebel. And in both systems, the state sets out to deliberately control what people think. In BNW they are induced to be compliant by pleasant experiences, whereas in 1984 its drug and fear induced.

I finished reading BNW a week or so ago. I was thinking about it earlier as I was watching a programme about advertising in America in the 60s-after the wonderful Mad Men!-and they were saying how Americans were encouraged to consume. Consuming was one of the ways that the BNW society remained stable.

I liked how people were persuaded, without the use of overt force, to happily accept their lot. Just applying force on people who are rebelling is a much less effective way of maintaining the status quo. Servalan and Travis take note.

I thought that the Savage's thoughts and actions became increasingly unlikely and irrational when he arrived in 'civilization', and this part didn't seem as well thought out as the earlier parts of the book.

But I was really glad that I had been spurred on to revisit this book.

Just finished BNW. Some of it is genuinely frightening but it's not a patch on 1984.

As for We - I finished that on friday. Very difficult to get into, partly because it wasn't written in English and thus is translated and partly because the concepts are quite alien. It is a book I thoroughly recommend as it's quite stimulating.

Some of the elements in it seem to flow into The Way Back - I wonder if Nation read it?_________________"Now then, Butch Harry, tell us about Fulham..."

(took me a couple of goes to find it coz I thought you meant the title was "As for We"!)

It says that George Orwell began writing 1984 a few months after he'd read and reviewed "We", and said he was taking it as the model for his next novel... So I guess it would be hard to say if Terry Nation read it or was just influenced by ideas that carried over into 1984 and Brave New World?_________________

With a stroke of luck, I picked up a copy of 'We' by Yevgeny Zamyatin at a local book fair that I go to from time to time. As it happened, Lisa picked it up and said it looked interesting and I hadn't even mentioned the book to her.

Looks good. I'll probablt get to it after I've finished Kafka's ''The Castle'. Thanks for the tip, Janov! _________________As I was saying, we all have to learn to live with disappointment

It's hard going but well worth it, although if you're managing to plow through Kafka, I doubt you'll have a problem! I've a copy of The Trial which I intend to have another go at at some point - I gave up on it some years back.

I did zip through E.M.Forster's The Machine Stops a few days back. Very short but very bleak. Absolutely superb. I'd recommend watching the Out of the Unknown adaptation - it's on youtube - very faithful to the story and probably the high point of the series._________________"Now then, Butch Harry, tell us about Fulham..."

You're right, Janov! The book is well worth it. Enjoyed it a lot. To be a bit critical, it loses it a little toward the end in my opinion. Nevertheless, it's still a great read. It is absolutely certain that Orwell dipped into this book for 1984. It's a pity that the book seems so little known yet '84 is seen as so influential.

Another one to the Ruskis._________________As I was saying, we all have to learn to live with disappointment